


Goodbye

by orphan_account



Category: Original Work
Genre: Loss, Pain, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:46:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28492602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Goodbye

How do you get over loss?

How do you get over that chest-crushing weight of absence - an absence of something that has been ripped away from you? Like the very air you need to breathe has been stolen from you at your most vulnerable. How do you get past that? When do the words "it's not fair!" stop screaming inside your head? When do you stop blaming yourself? When do you stop blaming all of those around you?

When does it stop hurting?

When does the brow unfurrow? When does smiling again not make you feel sick to the stomach? When can you convince yourself to eat again? When can you look at the people around you - people who have never felt real pain - and listen to their bullshit about their so-called hard lives without wanting to deal them just as much pain as you feel?

When does it all stop hurting so bad?

When you throw things around the house just to watch them break, will you come out of the anger and see the mess you've made? Will you ever have the energy to _care?_ When every aching second is yet another you wish you'd never lived at all, does time ever stop seeming like a curse? Do you ever stop wishing you had never been born at all?

Does the pain ever end?

When you stand at the side of the bridge and look down at the drop, does the voice whispering in your ear ever tell you to turn around? Does it ever tell you to breathe, to close your eyes and feel the breeze?

Does it ever tell you that you have more to live for?

The voice only tells me to embrace the fall, and eagerly await the void that follows soon after.

And I don't know how much longer I can fight it.

* * *

The voice is strong. It reaches past my carefully crafted defenses and latches on, digging its gnarly claws into my heart. While I'm walking back to the car in the pouring rain, I can't bring my feet to carry me faster. I'm shivering from the chill, or maybe the adrenaline. Maybe all of the bursting energy that was choking me from the inside, crawling underneath my skin, found an outlet through my muscles. Otherwise I was going to start screaming.

I'm soaked, and I get in the car, privacy of my own, and wrap my hands around my steering wheel hard enough to hear the leather creak. I realize, as my breath catches, that I'm close to a panic attack. I've felt it building, but I've gotten good at convincing it to wait, please just wait until we're out of the fire, please just wait until I have time to collapse into a hyperventilating unresponsive heap of tears and pain. But I wasn't ready for it yet.

I scramble for my MP3 player and shove the earbuds in, turning up the volume.

Usually at this volume the voices are drowned out. This voice, though... This lone voice, these images flying in front of my vision - they're louder than the usual ones. I now have my MP3 player at max volume, and my ears are hurting.

It's not enough.

Pain. Pain is what I need.

I rummage around in my bag and find my pocket knife, and flip it open. I watch the blade catch the light out of my window for a moment, then drag it over the skin of my inner forearm. There are already marks lining my forearms - dozens of them. Long, straight, linear lines that stretch from my wrists and backs of my hands to my elbow. Some of them are older - stark white against my skin. Some of them are pinkish, just a few months younger than those. And the rest are still scabbed and red.

I press down hard and grit my teeth at the stinging pain, but it feels good. I can concentrate on it, and it's just enough to stop the voices. It's just enough to distract myself from the images.

I watch a few small beads of blood well up - I've always had tough skin, and I've never been much of a bleeder.

I want to see blood.

I have to get going. The panic attack will take over, and I need to be home before that can happen.

I turn on the car, leaving my pocket knife resting in my lap along with my MP3 player, still blasting music, and grit my teeth, glancing out of my rear-view mirror at a couple laughing together as they walked behind my car, in my way.

I felt my foot tense up, felt my leg prepare to jerk and apply unrelenting pressure to the gas.

I want to see them in the hospital I was leaving. I want to see them bloody and broken and crying. I want to see them hurt.

Something made me stop, and I watched the pass.

Then I allowed my foot the pressure it so desperately wanted to let loose and chirped the wheels in my haste to back out of the parking spot.

I caught some air gunning it over the speed bump, and I listened to my car _thunk_ in protest.

The open road felt dangerous today.

More accurately, _I_ was dangerous for the open road.

I glance down and see that I'm pushing 80 in a 35 speed limit. I look ahead of me. Beside me. Behind me.

I see no cops. And I dare one to try to pull me over.

Today is the day they'll get a chase on their hands.

I got to the interstate highway and put the petal to the floor. It's an older car, so it doesn't have much power. But I'm going 90 and flying past the cars with their hazard lights on. It's windy. The rain is getting thicker. Every once in a while I feel my wheels jerk as I fly through deeper water. I want to lose traction. I want to spin out and crash. I want my life to be taken from me.

There's a bridge up ahead and my eyes found themselves stuck on the thick, immovable base structure just a few feet from the road.

_Floor it_ , the voice says to me. _Turn the wheel just ever so slightly and crash into it head on. There's no way you'd survive that at this speed. Just do it. You have nothing left here for you. No one will ever miss you once you're gone. Your few friends? They'll be sad for a few days, but they'll move on. They won't feel the pain you feel right now. Just do it. Kill yourself. Do it._

Something took over me. Something dark, evil and broken. I turn my wheel and cut over to the other lane, heading right for it, nothing in my way to stop me.

It happened in under a second.

For a split second, I was going to do it. I had already done it - I had already directed my path right for it with every intention to follow through -

_"That's the key to hitting the ball. Lift the bat, ground your feet, remember to turn your hips in the swing, and don't forget the follow-through. Alright, keep your head up kid, here we go!"_

\- but then I screamed. Survival instinct took over just when my wheel hit the loud warning strip on the side of the lane and I jerked the wheel away. _Away_.

The car behind me swerved in surprise and honked at me as I tried to regain control, heart pounding.

I am scared.

I'm scared of myself. I'm scared of others. I'm scared of the future. I'm scared of the past.

I'm just scared.

Tonight, with my pill bottle in my hand, voices in my head and images haunting my vision, I imagine a life without pain.

I pour out a heaping amount of the oblong green pills and lay back on my bed, staring up at my dark ceiling.

I tried to think of the future. I tried to imagine my life in five years.

I didn't see anything.

When I was younger, I remember doing this. Only, I'd had my friend's pistol in my hand instead of pills. When I looked at my life five years in the future, I saw myself, out of school, working a job and refusing to wear a uniform because that seemed important.

It still is. As far as I'm concerned, I was pretty damn accurate, all the way down to the refusal to wear a uniform. I had seen my future, and so I figured I had a future I was meant to live. And so, the pistol went back in my friend's case and I walked away.

This time, though...

This time I see nothing.

I can't see anything.

I know no one can see the future. But people can at least tell when they've decided theirs is over. People can decide their fates.

And I have decided mine.


End file.
